ISO-SPACE: ANNOTATION OF SPATIAL LANGUAGE James Pustejovsky Jessica Moszkowicz Marc Verhagen Brandeis University ISA-6: Interoperable Semantic Annotation, Oxford January 11 ISO
Feb 23, 2016
ISO-SPACE:ANNOTATION OF SPATIAL LANGUAGE
James PustejovskyJessica MoszkowiczMarc VerhagenBrandeis University
ISA-6: Interoperable Semantic Annotation, Oxford January 11, 2011
ISO
ISO-SPACE MEETINGS May 31, 2009 NACCL, Boulder
Announcing ISO-Space as a Working Item (WI) Initial Requirements defined
Nov. 3, 2009, Brandeis Requirements vetted and critiqued Motion and Paths are added to Requirements
March 29-April 1, 2010, Dagstuhl Reification of Events as Spatial Entities Incorporating QSR elements into requirements for ISO-Space
September 26-29, 2010, Airlie Center, Virginia Analysis of various genres with ISO-Space Revised specification and speculation on guidelines
APPLICATIONS AND TASKS FOR ISO-SPACE Building a spatial map of objects relative to one another. Reconstructing spatial information associated with a
sequence of events. Determining object location given a verbal description. Translating viewer-centric verbal descriptions into other
relative descriptions or absolute coordinate descriptions. Constructing a route given a route description. Constructing a spatial model of an interior or exterior
space given a verbal description. Integrating spatial descriptions with information from
other media.
GOAL OF ISO-SPACE Capture the complex constructions of spatial language in
text Provide an inventory of how spatial information is
presented in natural language
ISO-Space is not designed to provide a formalism that fully represents the complexity of spatial language
METADATA SPECIFICATIONDEVELOPMENT CYCLE
SEMANTIC REQUIREMENTS FOR ANNOTATION Fundamental distinction between the concepts of
annotation and representation Based on ISO CD 24612 Language resource management -
Linguistic Annotation Framework (Ide and Romary, 2004)
Distinguish between abstract syntax and concrete syntax Concrete Syntax XML encoding Abstract Syntax Conceptual inventory and a set of syntactic
rules defining the combination of these elements
INITIAL CONCEPTUAL INVENTORY FOR SPATIAL LANGUAGE ANNOTATION Locations (regions, spatial objects): Geographic, Geopolitical
Places, Functional Locations Entities viewed as Spatial Objects Paths as Objects: routes, lines, turns, arcs Topological relations: inside, connected, disconnected Direction and Orientation: North, downstream Time and space measurements: units and quantities for spatial
and temporal concepts Object properties: intrinsic orientation, dimensionality, size, shape Frames of reference: absolute, intrinsic, relative Spatial Functions: behind the building, twenty miles from Boulder Motion: tracking moving objects over time
SPATIAL EXPRESSIONS Constructions that make explicit reference to the spatial
attributes of an object or spatial relations between objects
Four grammatically defined classes: Spatial Prepositions and Particles: on, in, under, over, up,
down, left of Verbs of Position and Movement: lean over, sit, run, swim,
arrive Spatial Attributes: tall, long, wide, deep Spatial Nominals: area, room, center, corner, front, hallway
THE ANNOTATION FRAMEWORK
SPATIAL RELATIONS Topological:
In, inside, touching, outside Orientational (with frame of reference):
Behind, left of, in front of Topo-metric:
Near, close by Topological-orientational:
On, over, below Metric:
20 miles away, 3 blocks south of here
THE ELEMENTS OF ISO-SPACE ENTITIES
Location, spatial_entity, motion, event, path SPATIAL RELATIONS
Topological, orientational, distance
LOCATION Inherently grounded spatial entity Includes geospatial entities such as countries, mountains,
cities, etc. Attributes largely inherited fro SpatialML (ex. latlong) Document Creation Location
ELEMENTS, CON’T. SPATIAL_ENTITY
An entity that is not inherently a LOCATION, but participates in a spatial relation
Examples: car, building, John, traffic jam, hurricane Only annotated in the context of an explicit spatial relation
MOTION An inherently spatial event that involves a change of location Identified in ISO-TimeML as an EVENT Generate and participate in EVENT_PATH elements
EVENT A situation that does not involve a change of location but
that participates in a spatial relation
ELEMENTS, CON’T. EVENT_PATH
The implicit path that is introduced by virtue of a motion event
Includes information like the begin and end points of the path, the path region, and intermediate points
QUALITATIVE SPATIAL LINK (QSLINK) A topological or relative spatial relation between locations,
spatial entities, events, and motions A topological QSLINK uses the extended RCC8 set used in
SpatialML A relative QSLINK generally gets its relation value from a
SPATIAL SIGNAL
ELEMENTS, CON’T. DISTANCE
Relates two locations, spatial entities, or events and specifies the distance between them
SPATIAL SIGNAL (S_SIGNAL) The signal (or trigger) that introduces a relation Typically a relation word that locates an event or motion in a
particular location or path, adds information to an existing EVENT_PATH, or provides the relation type of a spatial relation
A SIMPLE SPATIAL LINK
EXAMPLES FROM NEWSWIRE ARTICLES
CORPUS DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT Written Directions
Take I-66 West to Exit 43A (Gainesville/Warrenton) and proceed South on Rt. 29 for approximately 10 miles.
Standard Newswire A Libyan ship that tried to break Israel's blockade of Gaza
docked in the Egyptian port of El Arish on Thursday afternoon.
Location Descriptions Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the
borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets.
CORPUS DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT, CON’T. Interior Descriptions
Sitting on the top of the bookcase farthest from you is a potted plant that hangs down almost to the floor.
Travel Blogs After spending a night with a family in Managua, my father
and I biked for two days and then took a boat out to a volcanic island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, Central Americas largest lake.
SOME OUTSTANDING ISSUES Should orientation be a distinct relation type? Should there be a distinction between PATH and PATH-
SEGMENTS, when referring to parts of a route, for example? What granularity or specificity of the qualitative spatial
relations is appropriate? How should Goal and Intentional Locations be represented?
John left New York for Boston. The plane is on its way to Paris.
How do we provide for an expressive vocabulary for shapes of objects?
Do we need a distinction between LOCATION and PLACE? Do we need SPATIAL-FUNCTIONS in order to refer to ad hoc
regions, such as behind the building, in front of the house?